The present invention relates to a tool for use in an ordering support system to revise computer records in bulk. Specifically, it relates to a system that permits an operator to filter data records according to a plurality of search parameters, revise the data as needed and review changed data records before integrating them into a data set of a larger system.
Modern businesses use computer networks to manage much of the data that they generate in the ordinary course of their operation. For example, SAP AG and other companies market Supply Relationship Management (SRM) applications, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications and other products that assist companies in the purchase and/or sale of products, goods and materials. The SRM application, for example, supports a coordinated network of purchasing agents who are engaged with a company's vendors to issue purchase orders, purchase requests and other conventional business documents. The SRM application creates these documents based on data entered by the purchasing agents at a computer system. The computer system, therefore, maintains data records of these documents which may be useful not only to track the progress of the purchase order itself but also for analytic processes that the company may use to determine if its current business processes are effective. The SRM application has tools to manage these analytic processes as well.
Similarly, a CRM application may be used by a company's sales force to record sales transactions, to generate sales documents and to perform analytic functions on data representing these sales. In this regard, the operation of such applications is well known.
Companies require applications to adapt to changing corporate structures. A team of purchasing agents, for example, is not static. Agents may be added to or dropped from the team over time. The team itself may expand or contract over time in response to a host of different factors. It is not always possible to foresee, when a new data record is created in a business application, whether the information in those data records will remain constant against dynamic forces that the company attempts to handle.
Large business organizations can create hundreds of thousands or even millions of business documents per year. They may manage teams of hundreds of agents across their corporate infrastructure. When such an organization must revise a base of transaction records in their business applications, it can be an awkward, time-consuming and error prone process to revise these records individually. Accordingly, the inventors perceive a need in the art for a computer system that permits an operator to perform a common revision to business objects in bulk.